YouTube as a Global Delivery Vehicle for E-Learning Resources in Medical Education: A Case Study

Background Students are bombarded with online material through a variety of different applications every day. After developing neuroanatomical content a decision was made to place one of the clips in Youtube and see if its quality and qualified content would be found and then watched. SUMMARY OF WORK After the 2 minute animation was completed it was uploaded into Youtube to be discovered. UCD students were given access to this material via a separate website. There was no promotional work done to drive traffic to this content. A conscious decision was made not to advertise the clip to see how it would be discovered by the general public searching in youtube. This clip was also put up with a creative commons license allowing people to add this clip to their site. SUMMARY OF RESULTS This material has been avaiable online since the 28th September of 2012. Currently it has been viewed just under 1300 times in a total of 44 different countries and would have played continiously for over 24 hours. In the US alone it has been played in a total of 34 different States and Ghana holds the highest retention rate at just under 200%. It has been embedded into a variety of locations such as facebook, World News.com, to Beaufort County Community College and twitter to name a few. Just under 13% of all the views were undertaken on a mobile device and 71 views from facebook. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS The hits for this clip continue to go up on a daily basis. Although modest numbers compared to the numerous sporting mishaps that are online it shows that if educational content is uploaded it will be found. It has also shown that the content will also be passed on by a variety of different ways and shared by what ever means are available. It provides an interesting Background for the next part of the project which will be to add the additional clips and then to actively promote the material.